The Future is ours to win

The title is a quote from President Obama’s State of the Union speech last night. Yet, my blog is not about the State of US, it is about immigration and India.

A couple of years ago, Tata Consulting Company (TCS) was found to have been violating the L-1 requirements. Since the L-1 had no set amount that beneficiaries were to be paid, TCS brought people over on a blanket L, paid them very cheap wages, and farmed them out to other companies at a cheaper rate than US Companies would. This lead to sweeping reforms of the whole L-1 visa.

Last year, several computer consulting companies, owned by Indian Americans were found to be performing many illegal activities in the H-1B visa categories. This led to the now infamous Jan 08, 2010 memo, where USCIS instituted hightened requirements for consulting companies. It also led to the H-1B site visits.

Last week, Tri Valley University was found to have been giving false student visas to Indian students. There was anything but learning going on at this California institution. There were no education standards whatsoever. In fact I personally would not grant an H-1B visa to a Tri Valley student, if I were a CIS officer. This quota is for “professionals”, and if you cannot get entry into a better school, you are NOT a professional. Yet many of these “students” were former H-1B holders, who, having lost their jobs, enrolled in Tri Valley.

Indians are a minority, and when things like these happen, they get sterotyped (albeit unfairly) as corrupt, false, doing anything and everything to stay in the US. The CIS scrutinizes the petitions of all Indians more carefully than other nationalities. And the majority of hard working, and successful Indian American owned businesses suffer.

Tri Valley is in the heart of Silicon Valley. Google will be hiring 6000 people shortly. Will anyone be Indians on H-1B?

We all suffer when things like this happens. And unless we take responsibility, the acts of few corrupt, (or in the case of Tri Valley students— stupid) individuals, will hamper India’s outsourcing business majorly. The future is ours to win.